The reason COVID-19 get singled out might not be the mortality rate alone (it looks edging close to 10% right now in Italy, which is alarmingly scary), but more on its impact on paralyzing our health care system with a swarm of people requires hospitalization. And it achieves all this in record time.
I don't agree this is a perception problem, the threat is real. Social media can panic, but you can't really tell people it is OK when patients are lying/dying on the floor of hospitals.
20% of cases require hospitalization. Once the hospitals are taken out, the fatality rate skyrockets and we're in the nightmare phrase - 400+ people died in Italy, today.
It's clearly very hard to let go of what looks like data and say "actually, we don't know". That's a driving cause of current events. There's a lot of analysis out there right now quoting things we "know" about SARS-CoV-2 and when you dig in, it's not real knowledge, it's a garbled or misused statistic. We have lots of epidemiology but not enough epistemology.
John Ionnadis has been writing about this:
https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-a...
He's a medic, epidemiologist and author of "Why most published research results are wrong", probably one of the most influential papers of the last 20 years across all of science. He says:
even some so-called mild or common-cold-type coronaviruses that have been known for decades can have case fatality rates as high as 8% when they infect elderly people in nursing homes. In fact, such “mild” coronaviruses infect tens of millions of people every year, and account for 3% to 11% of those hospitalized in the U.S. with lower respiratory infections each winter. These “mild” coronaviruses may be implicated in several thousands of deaths every year worldwide, though the vast majority of them are not documented with precise testing.
The whole essay is worth a read. It has more to say about questionable use of data and analysis than SARS-CoV-2 itself but is worth reading regardless.
At the start, the "Many thousands of mildly symptomatic infections aren't recorded" claim had plausibility. Now it needs to die in fire. This stuff has demonstrated it's qualities at scale and we need to get with it.
Do you have an argument against this other than die in a fire? In the UK the government is literally advising people to NOT call the NHS if they suspect they are infected but stay home and self isolate unless they become severely ill and cannot cope. It's pretty reasonable to assume the denominator is much larger from this behaviour.
You can read the discussion of the reasons to be pretty certain of the 1%+ fatality rate and how that's catastrophic on the rest of my thread and in more detail elsewhere. As to the UK plan, look here:
"I'm an epidemiologist, when I heard the UK plan, I thought it was satire":
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/15/epidem...
Your link shows the seriously ill among the unclosed cases as 59 people. If those dies, it won't increase the death significantly - maybe bump it to 1.5%.
But an increase to the base death rate doesn't matter. We should know a 1% death rate is going to be catastrophic and take action.
Edit: originally read you as arguing the death rate as too high so different argument. It's probably better to assume a higher death rate regardless anyway so I changed "you are wrong" to "not quite right" too.
The only out way is to test everybody in a large random sample. Even South Korea doesn't do that - people volunteer or a pushed to get tested. The end result is all testing to date has been done on the parts of population who are more likely to be feeling the effects of covid-19.
That skews everything. Even "every person infects 2.3 others" becomes suspect if there is a large reservoir of people out there who have it, are infectious but don't know it. Kids in particular, being the little germ bags they are, areseemingly mostly unaffected by it and so could be a huge vector.
Counting the dead after it's over is one way to by-pass that measurement problem. In Australia, a bad flu season kills 0.015% of the population. My gut feeling is we don't as yet have any idea where covid-19 will end up. Italy is currently sitting at 0.0083%, so they aren't up to the flu levels yet. The current overwhelming of the hospitals could be caused by an extraordinarily high infection rate coupled with it being very, very mild for most people, particularly kids. Or it could because it's as horrible as the media paints it. We simply don't know.
This won't be the case for other countries. 1% is way too optimistic at this point.
The fatality rate was 0.8%. The majority of their passengers were over 60 years old, so even this number is too high compared to the global population.
Even that would be catastrophic for if the virus infects a large percentage of the population, as it is rapidly moving to do. Thus we cannot be even in the least bit sanguine on this and need to move with speed against it. This is in no way comparable to 2009 or other recent events (contrary to your ggp).
Basically, there's enough information currently to tell people who pay attention and consider rationally that we need to spend every possible effort confining infections and quarantining, basically the entire earth. There is no alternative.
Please stop dividing deaths by confirmed cases and reporting that as mortality rate.
The number of confirmed cases is much, much larger than actual cases, in particular in outbreak zones where testing is very limited.
If someone understands this crude metric as "If you catch it and you show symptoms and you test positive, your likelihood of dieing is roughly (deaths divided by confirmed cases)" then that seems reasonable to me.
"Try to avoid catching it." is reasonable advice, as is "Be aware that you could catch it and be asymptomatic while still being infectious." to discourage people from visiting their grandparents this month.
I don't feel like I'm being misinformed if I divide deaths by confirmed cases, I feel like I'm getting a rough worst-case estimate.
Current fatality rate is less than 1% of confirmed cases.
Currently experts are giving us data and people are giving us sources.
[1] Countries like Iran literally have mass graves at this point and here you are claiming this is overblown by social media.
You really need to stop.
I suspect that you might have confused SARSCov2 for SARS?
This time around the outbreak originated in China that covered up the issue initially and ended up making the issue a lot worse than it could have been. Additionally, once everyone should've been paying attention on a global scale, Mr President down there in the US just tried to downplay the possible effects of a pandemic and it looks, at the moment, like he again just made everything worse.
Usually we can sit safe and confident at home that the government is overreacting to the situation and everything will be fine, this time around the authorities most globally visible (the US and China where the outbreak started) have obviously bungled their response and we're seeing a lot of panic because people don't have faith in the ability for the globe to respond in a unified manner.
It seems like Western democracies are very ill-equipped to deal with problems of this nature where all future outcomes are bad and the chosen executive has to deliberately choose the least worse. Facing such scenarios it's often the case our leaders choose not to take any political damage and do nothing until we are at the edge of catastrophe or take half-hearted measures that solve nothing. To take any deliberate and effective action would be not seen be seen as prescient aversion, but considered a wasteful diversion. The social, political and media environments, in particular the "news of the day" media, of the West are suited to guiding executives towards quick and decisive actions in the midst of the crisis because they are biased towards describing the here and now rather than the where and when. For most problems a society faces this may be a sufficient means of dealing with those issues. However in pandemics there are two catastrophes happening simultaneously, the one people think is happening in their midst based on the here and now, and the far more severe catastrophe epidemiologists know is happening based on the where and when. At the start of this crisis Western governments reacted to the former in the expected manner, that is with half-hearted measures and a dismissive attitude, what we needed was for them to react to the crisis epidemiology was describing.
There is very little excuse for Western governments during this pandemic. They caught a lucky break with the SARS outbreak in 2003 and became complacent, choosing not to bolster responses to epidemics as Japan, Taiwan and S.Korea have done. Then they wasted the time lag between the virus outbreak in China to it reaching their countries by declining to take effective actions.
Imagine if you're about to go skydiving and I'm responsible for packing your chute. As I pack, you notice a cord looks badly frayed. I tell you, "The cord is totally not frayed! They all look like that." Then I tell you, "Don't worry, we'll replace it before you go out." Then you find out we didn't actually replace it, and you look up on the internet that it can easily kill you. Then I say, "I knew it was a problem all along but we have a plan in place to handle that."
Would all of that make you feel less or more afraid of your skydiving experience?
I agree with you that this needs to not become any kind of a racial thing against Chinese people. But I'm going to stick with the facts, especially when someone is trying to paint a counter-factual lie of a narrative.
Please don't propagate this term, I understand your feelings but this term was absolutely intended to divide and using it can cause harm to Asian Americans.
Is that confirmed, or just hypothesized?
> and yet I don't see folks going around calling it the bat flu.
It's not a flu. But I wouldn't have a problem with people calling it the bat plague or whatever.
> but calling it the "wuhan flu" and "chinese flu" appears to have begun by a concerted effort to deflect attention from the administration's mishandling.
Given the attributed source of the first uses (of which I am aware) of the term "chinese flu", that seems almost certainly true.
> but this term was absolutely intended to divide
No, it was intended to evade. That's different. You said it yourself: "deflect".
Why is placing the place of origin on China (the nation), and the blame on the Chinese government, confused with placing the blame on a race?
(Yes, there are bigots and jerks who are looking for an excuse to go get racist on someone. There are some. I'm not sure that we should change our language just to avoid giving them an excuse, though, in the same way that we didn't go to these extremes for H1N1. There may be some damage to some actual people - and let's be clear, people who don't deserve it - but free speech is also a value that I uphold. I don't think we should let bigots and jerks control which words we're allowed to use.
And I've seen you elsewhere cite the Nazis and their statements about the Jews. Well, by that point, it will be time for measures equivalent to what we're doing for CoronaVirus, because the damage will be severe.)
It already is. My (conservative, right-voting) non-Chinese Asian parents are slightly nervous about being in public in our town, and my dad's car's mirror was smashed a couple nights ago.
> But I'm going to stick with the facts, especially when someone is trying to paint a counter-factual lie of a narrative.
COVID-19 is its scientific name: Coronavirus Disease 2019.
If you say covid-19, you can still disagree that it can be a dogwhistle, you can just say it that way because you want to stick with the scientific facts.
> And I think there is some value in factually pointing that out, and not letting the government of China create some it-was-some-US-soldiers fairy tale.
I agree that there's value in this. Letting Chinese propaganda and digital interests (continue to) run rampant is, from my layman perspective, a mistake. See TikTok and Discord for examples.
I also think it can be done in a way that doesn't catch families like mine in the crossfire: e.g. "that article is wrong, covid-19 actually started in China."
And over again.
Just this morning, CNN was frothing at the mouth at Trump calling it the "China virus" -- I mean, yeah, it's a virus that came from China -- and they have an op-ed on how this term is stoking xenophobia.
Well, if one believed that both these things were equally true, which one would be more worthwhile writing about?
I've seen a LOT of stories about the problems of hoarding, pleas to stop hoarding, etc...
I just assume bad cases of confirmation virus when I see claims like this, now.
The usage of that term is solely to try and deflect responsibility for anything domestic to China and pass the buck... it also has the potential to cause hate crimes in a time when we really should be unifying as nations.
That's because it is. There have been many reports of harassment and assaults on Chinese Americans, and this kind of label doesn't go away. The term "Spanish Flu" is still used 100 years later, not because it originated there (it didn't -- it almost certainly originated in midwestern USA) but because the media paid more attention there.
The terms we use matter.
This is an extreme, uncited, and frankly inflammatory extrapolation. There have been only a handful of such attacks -- I believe 5-ish (reported by The New Yorker and CNN). It's just the typical race-baiting we've seen that generates outrage clicks. Calling it the "China Virus" has no more societal impact (which is: minor at best) than the "Spanish Flu."
Really, it just strengthens my point about the nonsense the media is peddling, instead of asking the populace to remain calm, take precautions, and stay safe.
How about I provide some personal anecdata instead?
My (Asian) parents -- who prefer Fox over CNN and vote right, in case anyone fears they're under the spell of frothing journalists -- have been more nervous about going about in public. My dad's car's mirror was smashed a couple nights ago.
In a similar way that I'm not as deeply affected by the current economic environment as a low wage worker is, you're not as affected by the cultural perception as people like my family are. With that in mind, I ask that you acknowledge that such acts could very well be more common than the sensationalized ones that liberal media eagerly pounce upon, and thus more common than you personally might be aware of.
How many are an acceptable number? Or tolerable number?
Dogwhistling for racism isn't an innocent action and deserves no understanding, it is hate filled and driven out of self-interest by those doing it.
This is an absolutely insane analogy -- not to mention grossly off-base. No one is scapegoating the Chinese people (or, even less so, Americans that happen to have Asian ancestry). Calling it the "Chinese Virus" simply points to its geographic source, i.e. Wuhan, China.
Yeah, Godwin's Law strikes again. Not everything is literally Hitler.
> This is an extreme, uncited, and frankly inflammatory extrapolation. There have been only a handful of such attacks -- I believe 5-ish (reported by The New Yorker and CNN).[0]
So nobody is doing this? Or have there been incidents that you yourself have previously acknowledged?
I tried civilly engaging in discourse with you earlier[1]. But now it seems like you're arguing with people just to argue, not to actually discuss these topics.
Also, you can correct people who are mistaken about where it originated without saying "Chinese flu". E.g. "actually, the coronavirus originated in China". I remarked on this to another user who said they just wanted to stick to the facts about its origins.[2]
If you're intent on making sure China is regarded as the source and/or culprit, you can emphasize further by adding something like, "and that's why the majority of cases and deaths from [coronavirus/covid-19] were in China. It started there." And that can be said perfectly fine without "Chinese virus".
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22621821
Sure, information (and misinformation) travels much faster now, but I am not sure if that is necessarily a bad thing. It might have done more help than harm in this case for all we know. I think that is the case because this one is not as deadly, so sensationalization and fear-mongering is not easy. If the fatality rate was like 50% (as it was for Avian flu, I found recently to my surprise), it could have been way worse with the media.
On the other, I think Tomas Pueyo's medium blog is really important and correct imo as another amateur pundit. The thing about it is, even with people saying useful, what you really need is the CDC and other authorities being with it enough that they command the most credibility and with them failing to achieve that, even good punditry can only do so much.
From https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prepare/transmissi...
>>> Can someone spread the virus without being sick? People are thought to be most contagious when they are most symptomatic (the sickest). Some spread might be possible before people show symptoms; there have been reports of this occurring with this new coronavirus, but this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads.
Doesn't seem to indicate asymptomatic carriers are a big concern?
I would say asymptomatic carriers are the biggest concern.
>>> The sequence of events suggests that the coronavirus may have been transmitted by the asymptomatic carrier.
>>> If the findings in this report of presumed transmission by an asymptomatic carrier are replicated, the prevention of COVID-19 infection would prove challenging. The mechanism by which asymptomatic carriers could acquire and transmit the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 requires further study.
>>> Considering the reported similarity in viral loads between asymptomatic and symptomatic patients [14] and that transmission of SARS-CoV-2 by asymptomatic or paucisymptomatic cases may be possible, even though there is no clear evidence as yet of asymptomatic transmission, the relatively high proportion of asymptomatic infections could have public health implications
No clear evidence of asymptomatic transmission. A lot of 'probably', 'suggests' as before. It's certainly a growing possibility, but not I'd not call it proven yet as a big factor.
[0] https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.E...
[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/27620...
"Most contagious when symptomatic" is not even remotely the same thing as "not contagious unless symptomatic". We also don't have a good picture of what symptoms look like aside from the most serious cases.
Keep in mind the original SARS had a death rate of 10%, so obviously there was a tremendous amount of fear that this new related virus would be similarly lethal.
No, they aren't US policy of suppression was an abrupt policy turn that came with this report: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/196234/covid19-imperial-rese...
The Chinese example didn't change overnight, the information available about predicted outcomes of different policy approaches in the US and UK did, and that's what drove policy change, including the Trump Administration flipping from claiming it was a hoax cooked up by political opponents to treating it as a serious issue.
2009 h1n1[1] was aggressively pushed by the WHO as having a 60% CFR[2]. Similar issue to corona19, basing everything on literal test results. Meaningless! Presumably why WHO telling the world to test everything.
[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8094655.stm [2] https://jech.bmj.com/content/62/6/555.abstract [3] https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families... [4] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jul/16/swine-flu-pand...
It's certainly possible that SARSCoV2 will have fewer total deaths than H1N1.
Everyone who is ill enough to be about to die will end up in a hospital, with the virus already being transmitted in the society the point in testing everyone else is trending towards negligible.
Sure if the measures taken allows the rate becomes low enough again, then contact tracing might become worth doing again.
You can also try to do statistical tests on some cohorts of population and extrapolate from there but if the resources are limited then saving lives counts more.
Out of confirmed infections. The fatality rate would only decrease as more people are discovered to have been infected.
Hopefully we can avoid saturating the medical system in the US.
With quarantines and traffic, activity, consumption slowdown, the air quality is getting much better, did we just discover the solution for global warming indirectly? which is a much more important problem than those human viruses by the way
Now, that's some hard facts you have there!
Nobody knows how many people died from H1N1 in 2009. The CDC has only estimates and the range is huge:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/spotlights/pandemic-global-estimates...
And that is why I used the words I did.
H1N1 ended up not being as fatal as SARSCoV2, but we didn't know that at the time. People were saying it had a CFR of >1% in Mexico (where the original outbreak was). That number dropped way down as better data came in after the outbreak.
But still, up to 575,000 people may have died from it. That's not nothing.
And... nobody cared? People were calm. It was on the news, but there was no panic.
I think part of it was how social media has changed the way we consume and respond to information. I've seen extreme panic on FB, Reddit, HN, Twitter -- which seems to cause more panic. Everything in the media is turned up to 11 now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic
It's interesting to go back further and read this Bird Flu article from 2005, where a UN Health Official warned of 150 million possible deaths, and said things like, "It's like a combination of global warming and HIV/Aids 10 times faster than it's running at the moment." So, the media has always turned things up to 11, but something about the current era has exacerbated the issue.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4292426.stm